Beginnings - SF2 (33 page)

"Uhh, yeah," she admitted. "But I had a steady girlfriend for a while, and we haven't seen each other since…when was it, Ryan?"

"No, that's okay," Jamie interjected by holding her hand up. "I'm going to question you separately. You tell me when it was, Carolyn."

"Ahh, I think it was um…some time in the fall. I'm not sure exactly when though."

"That's acceptable," Jamie pronounced. "I've only had dibs since April."

"Oh, it was lots longer than that," she assured her, with a look of obvious relief. "Anyway, I broke up with my girlfriend a couple of weeks ago and I was just about to get back into the dating scene. I finished my shift at ten and was driving home when I caught sight of Ryan here. I thought it would be fun to um…play a game with her."

"Have you played this little game before?" Jamie asked as she turned her attention to her blushing lover.

"I like a woman in a uniform," she squeaked, blushing furiously.

After Jamie assured Carolyn that she was mostly joking, they all said goodbye. "Now don't forget to lose her number," Jamie reminded the chagrined officer as they parted.

They stood together, watching the squad car depart. Ryan slid her arm around her partner and said, "Would you ever consider…?"

"In your dreams, Buffy," she snapped as she strode over to reclaim their gear with Ryan's bemused chuckle just tickling her ears.

On the way back to the car, Jamie absently kicked a rock. "Why wasn't she on your list to call?" she asked Ryan.

"Huh?"

"You told me that you went over to Alisa's to tell her about us. You said you were telling your 'special friends' that you were off limits."

"I started to," Ryan said, "but I didn't really enjoy having Alisa give me a hard time about dating a straight woman."

"So…you're gonna do what?" Jamie asked as she looked up at her partner. "Just wait until they call you…or jump on top of you?"

"Jamie," she began, but her obviously miffed partner just shook her head and moved ahead of her to walk to the car alone.

The short ride back to the Noe Valley had never seemed so long to Ryan. An uncomfortable silence had descended upon the car as soon as they climbed in, and Jamie gave no signs that she was going to end it anytime soon.

Ryan had always prided herself on her ability to bide her time when she knew there was trouble brewing. She'd always thought that it was best to let the other person figure out what was bothering them, and then talk about it. As with so many things, her budding relationship with Jamie was changing her attitude. She wanted nothing more than to jump right in and make her partner talk about it—ready or not. She was just about to blurt out her question when Jamie turned to her and said in a very quiet voice, "That scared me, Ryan."

"Scared you?" she asked, totally caught unawares by the statement. "Because she was taking me away?"

"No," her partner replied quickly. "That was frightening for a moment, but that's not what scares me."

Ryan immediately picked up the change in tense. It was obvious that whatever had bothered Jamie was still bothering her. Pulling the car to the curb, she shut off the engine and turned in the seat as much as her long body would allow. "Tell me, Jamie," she urged as she reached over and lightly grasped her hand.

It was clear that Jamie was embarrassed. Her mist green eyes refused to meet Ryan's, even though the dark haired woman tried to engage her. "I worry about pleasing you," she finally said in such a quiet voice that the gentle, muted sounds of the cars passing by almost obscured her words.

"Pleasing me?" Ryan asked, still confused—both by the direction the conversation was taking, and the tone of her partner's voice.

"Sexually," she clarified, beginning to blush.

"But why...what about Carolyn...why now?" Ryan stumbled.

The green eyes finally shifted and locked onto Ryan's, accompanied by one arched blonde eyebrow.

"Because of the way I teased you?" Ryan finally guessed.

"No, well, not entirely," she said. "Umm, that's part of it, but not all of it."

"Come on, Jamie," Ryan gently urged. "This is important to me because it's obviously bothering you. Please tell me what's going through your mind."

"You've just done so much," she finally said in frustration. "I worry that I won't be able to please you like you're used to being pleased. I mean, I don't even really know what you're talking about when you implied that you wanted me to be in a uniform."

"Jamie," she said softly, obtaining and holding eye contact. "You're right about one thing. I know that you will never please me like I'm used to."

The mix of hurt and shock that flew across the younger woman's face was nearly heartbreaking, but Ryan had a point to make and she wanted to make sure it sank in. "I just wish I had some way of convincing you that I don't want to be pleased the way I used to be."

"What do you mean?" she asked, her lower lip trembling slightly.

"I probably had sex with Carolyn two dozen times," she said gently, still holding one small hand. "She has touched my vulva every way imaginable, and I've got to admit that she did a damn good job of it. But she never, not once, touched my heart. She never made my chest feel like it would burst with love. She never made my knees weak with emotion. My point is that it's really not that hard to make me come, Jamie."

Her partner had to smile at that characterization.

"Yeah, you already guessed that, huh?" she asked with a grin.

"Kinda," Jamie admitted with a smile.

"If I let a woman touch my vulva, I will eventually have an orgasm. No big deal. But I have almost never let a woman touch my soul, Jamie. I've kept a very tight lock on my heart. I swear that you're the only woman who has that key." A single tear had escaped from her lover's eye, and as she reached over to catch it, she pressed her lips against Jamie's mouth, savoring the taste. "Sex between us is going to be so much more than manipulating genitals," she vowed, not moving her head an inch. "It's going to be tender and sweet and passionate. Most of all it's going to be loving, Jamie; it will always come from love."

"Are you really sure that love can make up for inexperience?" she asked timidly, dearly wanting to believe Ryan but having a difficult time of it.

"Really," Ryan vowed, placing a kiss on her smiling lips. "Truly," as she placed another. "Absolutely." The final kiss, punctuating her sentence, lasted longer than either had planned. The kiss got wetter and hotter and deeper, ratcheting up the desire between them until Ryan pulled away with a whimper. She shook her head so roughly that her bangs flew from side to side. "Jesus, Jamie, you make me hot just sitting in a car having a conversation!"

"Um...sorry?" she said in a teasing tone.

"You've got nothing to be sorry for, Love. It's all good. You know," Ryan murmured, continuing to speak softly right into Jamie's ear. "I really need to sleep with you tonight. Do you think we could sneak into your house?"

Jamie gazed at her in thoughtful silence for a few moments. Pursing her lips she replied, "I don't have any way to check on Cassie now that Mia's gone. I know she's not supposed to leave for New York until the middle of June, so there's a pretty good chance that she and Chris will stay at my place now that Mia's gone."

Ryan tried to hide her disappointment with a casual tone but was largely unsuccessful. "That's okay, maybe I can get my snuggle quotient before we go to bed."

"Umm, if you really want to we could go to my dad's apartment," she offered tentatively.

"That sounded significantly less than sincere," Ryan said with a furrow in her brow.

"Well, it would probably be okay but the last time really bothered me. I guess I'm a little hesitant to stir up those feelings."

Ryan considered this for a moment, nodding her head briefly. The thought occurred to her that the woman Jim Evans had been with might have a key to the place too, so even if he was gone, there was a tiny chance that she might show up. "That settles it," Ryan stated firmly, deciding not to risk either Jamie's comfort or her illusions about her father just to satisfy her own needs. "We'll be on the ride soon, and from then on we're stuck together like glue—24/7."

"How about a hotel?" Jamie ventured, unwilling to let the issue die.

"No," Ryan said quickly, not even taking the time to consider the question. "It was hard enough for me to let you pay for the room during finals. I think it would bother me too much."

"DUH!" Jamie cried as she slapped her head with her open hand. "I've got just the place! Private, quiet, no roommates, free and convenient!"

"Where?"

"You just wait and see, Baby. I'll pick you up from work at six."

Jamie was waiting for her partner at six on the dot. The sweaty, dark-haired woman came out, looking the worse for wear.

"Were you working out, too?" Jamie asked.

"Kinda," she admitted. "My five o'clock is a new client, and she doesn't have a clue what I'm talking about. I have to show her every single exercise, and she still has trouble. I wound up doing as much as she did today." Shaking her head in exasperation, she added, "I've never had a client like that. It almost seemed like she just wanted to see me work out. Weird, huh?" she asked, with a totally ingenuous look on her face.

"Yeah, really weird," Jamie said with an internal smirk, having a very good idea why a woman would want to watch her buff lover work out. "Hey, good news," she cheerily announced. "I went to the house to get my mail and ran into my soon-to-be ex-roommate."

"That's good news?"

"No. The good news is that she was leaving for a movie. She won't be home for a couple of hours so we can stop by there to get you showered."

"That is good news," Ryan agreed as she delicately sniffed under her raised arm.

As they were getting out of the car, Ryan looked on questioningly as her lover popped the trunk and pulled out a duffel bag. "What's that?"

"A change of clothes for you," she smiled. "You do have a tendency to ruin a perfectly clean outfit in a very short time, you know."

"Hey, why are we here anyway? Couldn't we go to our destination and get showered and changed?"

"Not really," the smaller woman replied. "This is much easier."

Ryan decided to take her partner at her word as she hoisted the heavy bag from her grip and toted it inside.

A few minutes later, when Ryan emerged from the shower, she smelled something delicious wafting up from the kitchen. Jamie had laid out a complete outfit for her so she put on the clothes, smiling to herself as she considered how butch her young lover liked her to look. She shrugged into the shorts and faded jeans, then added the red hooded sweatshirt, smiling to herself that Jamie had not provided a bra. She then sat down to lace up the tan suede work boots. When she was finished, she slipped on the jeans jacket from which she'd removed the sleeves after she'd seriously ripped one of them while trying to leap a barbed wire fence during the AIDS Ride several years before.
I'm glad we're not going to a nice hotel
, she mused as she ran her fingers through her hair and grinned at her reflection.

Trotting down the stairs, she stood in puzzled silence as she watched her lover work at the sink. "So where we're going has no adequate shower, no adequate kitchen, and is casual enough for me to look like a big dyke?" she asked, as she stood in the doorway with arms crossed, nearly filling it with her size.

"That about sums it up," the blonde laughed as she turned her head just enough to take in her tough-looking lover. "Nice outfit, Buffy," she added with a definite leer.

"Just trying to keep the customer satisfied," Ryan joked as she crossed the room and leaned over to get a look at the dinner preparations, as well as nibble on a tempting neck.

The giggles that greeted her attack only served to increase the ferocity of her nibbles. "Mmm, let's skip dinner and just munch on each other," she murmured.

"Ohh, you are hot tonight," Jamie teased as she pushed her butt out just enough to rub it against her partner's thighs. "When you want to skip a meal, it's obviously a serious problem."

"Mmm, is that shrimp and mussels you're cleaning?"

"Yep."

"Then I can wait to nibble on you," Ryan decided with a small chuckle as she gave her partner a playful swat on the butt.

The fruta de mare over pasta was a thing of beauty. Once again Ryan ate far more than was wise, finally leaning back in her chair and unbuttoning the top two buttons of her jeans.

"I've wondered why you always wear button-fly jeans," the smaller woman teased.

"Yep. It's hard to let a zipper down just a little. More than once I've stood up after a meal only to have my pants stay seated when I had the zipper down."

"Well in a few weeks, you're never going to have pants on while we're in the house, so it won't matter," the feisty blonde threatened.

"That day can't come soon enough for me," Ryan said as she gazed at her partner with her best lovesick look.

It was almost nine o'clock when they arrived at their destination. "Uhh, isn't it a little late to go sailing?" Ryan wondered aloud, as the car pulled up right next to the entrance to the docks.